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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:14] Mo Brady: Every spring, theater fans look to The Ensemblist when they ask why there are not theater awards for Best Ensemble. And this year, I wanted to provide listeners with an informed and thoughtful look at the challenges and barriers of adding a category to New York theater awards. Beyond emotions, I'm interested in why adding a category is more complex than listeners or me or all of us may imagine.

[0:48] Mo Brady: This week, I got to sit down with the president of the Outer Critics Circle Awards, David Gordon. The OCCs bestow awards to both Broadway and Off-Broadway theater, but have never had a category for Outstanding Ensemble in their more than 70 years of existence. So I sat down with David to learn about the OCC nominating process and why, according to him, creating an Outstanding Ensemble award is a lot more complicated than I had imagined. Here's our conversation.

[1:14] Mo Brady: Hi.

[1:14] David Gordon: Hi.

[1:34] Mo Brady: Would you introduce yourself? And do you live in New York City?

[1:36] David Gordon: I live in Astoria, Queens. Born and raised in New York.

[1:38] Mo Brady: Okay. And you are?

[1:40] David Gordon: My name is David Gordon. I'm the president of the Outer Critics Circle, senior features reporter at theatermania.com.

[1:46] Mo Brady: And I'll give you a shout out because you are the very first person who ever wrote about the Ensemble.

[1:51] David Gordon: I was thinking about that the other day when I was getting ready for this. I was like, I remember sitting down with them at two offices ago. Thank you for your belief in us early on.

[1:59] Mo Brady: Please. I love it.

[2:00] Mo Brady: That was for TheaterMania. This, we're going to talk about the Outer Critics Circle Awards.

[2:04] David Gordon: Yes.

[2:05] Mo Brady: What are the Outer Critics Circle Awards? Who are the Outer Critics?

[2:08] David Gordon: This is actually the 70th anniversary of the Outer Critics Circle Awards. It's one of the oldest award giving organizations in New York. It was originally founded in the 1950s, in 1950 actually, by a group of critics, reviewers, newspaper columnists, magazine columnists who were located outside of New York City. This was back when every publication you could think of had a theater critic. And all of these critics wanted a way to talk about the shows that they've seen. But the New York Drama Critics Circle, which was already in existence, wouldn't let them in because it was New York-based publications for the New York Drama Critics Circle. And all of these people wrote for the Christian Science Monitor.

They wrote for every publication you could think of across the country. And now the organization is pretty much the same, but we're welcoming members who write for various websites now as opposed to, say, newspapers or magazines. Theater criticism is proliferating on the web.

[3:02] Mo Brady: How many voices are there currently in the circle?

[3:05] David Gordon: I don't have an exact number, but it fluctuates anywhere between 80 and 90 on a yearly basis.

[3:09] Mo Brady: Oh my gosh, that's a lot of people.

[3:11] David Gordon: It is a lot of people. And that's really how we keep the organization sustaining because we don't have any financial sponsors. We're not like the Drama Desk Awards, which is represented by Broadway brands and was previously represented by TheaterMania, actually. We're not like the Tonys, which has the American Theater Wing. We are a self-sustaining organization. We live on member dues. We live on party fees. We live on donations. We live on ad sales. I don't know how long we'll be able to sustain that, but we've sustained it for 70 years and I would like to sustain it for 70 more, as they say.

[3:43] Mo Brady: So what is your position and what does that mean?

[3:46] David Gordon: I am the president of the organization, which I like to think that I'm better than what's going on now. And basically my job is to keep the organization going. The focus of the Outer Critics Circle really is the Outer Critics Circle Awards. They are the first awards that are presented each awards season, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Tonys. People really love the Outer Critics Circle Awards because, like the Drama Desk, we nominate Broadway and Off-Broadway. But unlike basically any other award you can think of, we announce the winners in advance. We've always announced the winners in advance. So you're sitting there at our cocktail party dinner and it's not like you're waiting to see if your name is going to be called. You know your name is going to be called. So it's a much more relaxed atmosphere. It's a lot more fun. And as president, I host the show. I preside over our nominations day.

[4:33] Mo Brady: Is that the day that you decide on the nominations or the day you announce the nominations?

[4:36] David Gordon: That is the day we decide on the nominations, which is nine of us in a room together at the New York Public Library from 9 a.m. to... I've done it. It's gone as late as 9 p.m. Well, we have about 30 categories. And because we look at Broadway and Off-Broadway, there's just so much to consider. Outstanding Broadway Musical, there's a finite number of shows. You know, I think this year there will be only seven or eight shows eligible for Outstanding Broadway Musical. When you look at a category like Outstanding Off-Broadway Play or our John Gassner Award, which is specifically for new plays by new American playwrights, that encompasses Broadway, Off-Broadway, and there are... The Off-Broadway category could have a hundred shows and a hundred plays that have opened this season because it's every non-profit theater. It's every commercial Off-Broadway production.

[5:24] Mo Brady: How does a person get nominated to be on the nominated committee?

[5:27] David Gordon: You know, it's sort of like the Supreme Court. You're on the nominating committee until basically you die. It's a volunteer position. It's a great job for older people who are retired because they have time to go to matinees, which I don't really have. But it's also a great job for the younger people because the younger people have far different opinions I've noticed than some of my older colleagues.

[5:47] Mo Brady: So the nominating committee even is a mix of older critics and new critics?

[5:51] David Gordon: I'm the youngest person on the membership committee by a lot of years, but it's a really good mix of people. It's, you know, I'm a young heterosexual man. We have several older gay men. We have several women. And it's just a really good mix of people who have a lot of different opinions and who see shows very differently.

[6:11] Mo Brady: Are the members of the nominating committee required to see a certain number of shows or is it just as many as you can?

[6:16] David Gordon: A lot of it is as many as you can, but we try to limit it to Broadway and Off-Broadway in Manhattan.

[6:23] Mo Brady: Describe this nomination day at the New York Public Library. Let's say a category like Outstanding New Broadway Musical. What is the conversation?

[6:30] David Gordon: We have a list of everything that opens. And then we are allowed to pick five because we nominate five in each category. And we're allowed to pick five each. And then it's like we go around the room. It's like, Diana, please raise your hand. Six, please raise your hand. Flying Over Sunset, please raise your hand. A lot of times everybody's in agreement. You know, then there are cases like a show like Be More Chill, for instance, which was on the cusp. And then we just had a conversation on what are the merits of Be More Chill.

[7:01] Mo Brady: Now, a question that I have is about categories.

[7:03] David Gordon: Yes.

[7:04] Mo Brady: Have you been a part of the addition or subtraction of any categories?

[7:08] David Gordon: Yes. I love adding new categories because there are so many things to consider when it comes to making theater. The most recent new categories we've added are Outstanding Projection Design, Outstanding Sound Design.

[7:20] Mo Brady: What were the conversations around adding those categories?

[7:23] David Gordon: A lot of it has to do with financial consideration. For our party, for instance, our party is very small. It's like I said earlier, it's sustained by member donations, by tickets, by ad sales for the program journal. So much of it is will we have space at the party? Will we have time to give these winners their due at the party? Will we be able to afford to comp a winner and a guest? Because obviously winners and guests receive tickets to this. We're not going to charge the winners to come to the party where they're being honored. So much of it is based on a financial consideration like that.

[8:01] Mo Brady: So you know where I'm going.

[8:02] David Gordon: I know. I know absolutely where you're going.

[8:04] Mo Brady: So for an ensemble, one of the considerations to have a category would be...

[8:09] David Gordon: Yeah, just purely financial. Do we have... I was talking to someone about this this morning, actually. I was... say we wanted to give the ensemble of Moulin Rouge a Best Ensemble. First of all, we'd have to define what an ensemble is because ensembles for musicals are very different from ensembles in plays. Presuming that we're talking about the singers and dancers in Moulin Rouge, the ensemblists in Moulin Rouge, not counting Aaron Tveit, Karen Olivo, Danny.

[8:33] Mo Brady: Sure.

[8:34] David Gordon: You know, that's 30 people. So that's 60 tickets. If we give Moulin Rouge, the ensemble of Moulin Rouge, the 30-person chorus in Moulin Rouge a special award, that's 60 tickets because it's one for every person and one for a guest. And that's not saying someone might want to take their, you know, spouse and their parents or their spouse and their kids.

[8:53] David Gordon: So that's, you know, six extra tables of ten. That's $130 a plate. So times, times, times, times, times. And that's a lot of money. That's room that we might not have in the venue that we're doing it. Last year, actually, I was thinking about this too, last year we gave a special award to the puppet team of King Kong. And what we ended up doing was we invited two representatives from the ensemble to come. So that's four tickets. But everybody got a certificate and everybody got their nice certificate holder, like they're embossed with the logo on it. So everybody got that. And while it was great to have these two people from King Kong at the party, I just kept thinking to myself, we gave out an award to an entire ensemble.

This is just really unfair that only these two people get to go to the actual thing and accept it. And that's what we always have to think about when we do this. I'm always an advocate for a best ensemble award, because when you look at the ensemblist in a show like Moulin Rouge, they are working so hard, or the cast of Tina, or all of the guys just fighting each other shirtless in the rain in West Side Story. They are working so hard. No one really ever notices it. And I would love to do that. But just on a practical level, there are so many different considerations that we just can never figure out a way to do it and make it fair or do it and make it financially stable for us.

[10:07] Mo Brady: Yeah. How do you give an award that's not, you want to award them, but logistically, what I'm hearing you saying is that you want to award them, or you'd like the opportunity to talk about that, but you don't want it to be a second class award. You want it to be at the level of all the others.

[10:27] David Gordon: Right. We want to treat the kids that are making their Broadway debut in West Side Story, the same way we wanted to treat Bette Midler when she was doing Hello Dolly. I don't necessarily think it's fair, and I've reflected on this a lot in the year since King Kong, not that we heard any complaints of like, oh, we won this award, but we weren't able to go to the thing. And King Kong actually did like a huge photo op on stage where they presented the puppet with like an oversized, like a Publishers Clearinghouse oversized check, and they made it a photo op, and it was really cute. So they worked in our favor because they were advocating for the award. That is something that we honestly have not figured out how to deal with yet.

[11:05] Mo Brady: Well, just someone listening has a lot of money that they're going to donate to the Outer Critics Circle. If you want to sponsor the Outer Critics Circle Awards so we can...

[11:13] David Gordon: All right. Sending that out to you listeners.

[11:17] Mo Brady: Yeah. And I hope that doesn't sound terrible of me either.

[11:20] David Gordon: No, I think it's very... it's something I haven't considered. Yeah. Like, why can't you just celebrate them? Because the things that I think about are that people don't know how to qualify an ensemble or judge an ensemble. I think those are the two things that I've heard.

[11:35] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[11:36] David Gordon: I mean, you said one of them in this conversation. You said, are we talking about everybody other than the people on principal contracts?

[11:40] Mo Brady: Right.

[11:41] David Gordon: And like, you don't necessarily know who's on a chorus contract versus a principal contract. Right. Like, where does Robin Hurter fall in Moulin Rouge, for instance? Is she considered a principal because she has a speaking part? Is she considered an ensemble actor, an ensembleist, because she is one of the can-can dancers? Like, that sort of thing. The other thing I think about is something like Come From Away. Right. Which is an incredible ensemble of storytellers, and yet everyone in that show is not technically an ensemble member.

[12:09] Mo Brady: Right.

[12:10] David Gordon: And it gets even dicier for plays because, you know, a show like The Humans is six people who are equal parts. And do we honor all of them? Do we honor, you know, Reed Burney and Jane Howdy's show? Do we honor Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley, and Ben Miles, who are just the three cast members of the Lehman Trilogy? Or do we nominate, say, Simon as a lead actor and Ben as a featured actor? You know, are they... Ensemble in play is, I find, a lot less cut and dry than ensemble in a musical can be looked at.

[12:39] Mo Brady: Do the productions tell you who is up for featured and leading?

[12:45] David Gordon: Yes. More often than not, yes. What we usually get, we usually get the, you know, the end-of-year swag bags, which are, you know, a program, a CD, and then a list of please consider Aaron Tveit lead actor, please consider Karen Olivo lead actress, please consider Danny Burstein featured, please consider Saren Gauja featured, please consider Riddhi Rojas featured. It usually ends with the name that's above the block of ensemble people in the program cover.

[13:14] Mo Brady: So if there was an ensemble award, that sheet could say, please consider these people.

[13:21] David Gordon: Yes, which is what King Kong did. King Kong sent us a please consider the puppetry team that includes the actual puppeteers, plus all of the people that are actually interacting with the puppet. You know, a show like the Lehman Trilogy, which I was talking about earlier, or a show like Six is going to have... They're really going to have to define for me, and I'm requesting this already, they're going to have to define for me what they want. Do the women in Six want to be considered all together like they were at the Olivier Awards? Do they want, you know, is Abby Mueller or Anna Uzzele a leading actress, and then Samantha Pauly is a featured actor, featured actress? Or are they all featured actresses? Like I said, do they want us to consider them all together? Or are they vying for a special award because they know a special award would be more likely than a solo nomination for one member of the cast?

[14:11] Mo Brady: So let's say money was an issue. Yeah. And you could create an outstanding ensemble award.

[14:18] David Gordon: Yeah. How would you define the ensemble?

[14:21] Mo Brady: That's so hard. And that's something that I think about all the time. I think just based on what I view an ensemble is, it would be the singers and the dancers that are running around the stage doing a thousand costume changes per act one finale, who don't get recognized the same way that the leading actors. And I feel like that's how you also define to some degree what the ensemblists are. We sort of play, you know? I think I would say an ensemblist is someone who is on a chorus contract.

[14:54] David Gordon: Yeah.

[14:55] Mo Brady: And also I would say that the ensemble is the group of storytellers that's creating an experience for the audience.

[15:02] David Gordon: Right. If the Outer Critics Circle was to come to me and say, we want to do an ensemble award, which one would you choose? I would choose the second.

[15:13] Mo Brady: That's interesting.

[15:14] David Gordon: Because I think it's easier for a voter to look at the show and say, those people all worked together to tell a story.

[15:18] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[15:19] David Gordon: Versus I know how to judge tap dancing versus intricate choral vocals. Yeah. And one of the things that should be noted is that the Drama Desk actually has a special ensemble award. They have a special ensemble award that they give out year to year, but it's mostly only for plays. You know, I'm the kind of person that I'll look at Tony nominations or the Oscar nominations or whatever, and I will say, I can't believe that those SOBs left out my favorite actor, left out so-and-so, or I can't believe that this category is dominated by one thing. But doing it has given me a new appreciation for how hard it actually is. Sitting there in the room, seeing how this works. And it's not like people are paying us to nominate their client.

There's no ill-gotten anything happening. It's just nine people in a room who have very different opinions on the theater scene. Everybody's opinion being taken into consideration. What I tell people when it comes to nominating awards, when they're complaining like, oh, my favorite got left out. What you have to remember is that it's a lot of different minds putting this stuff together and that it's never going to turn out exactly as you want it. But I, for one, and I know my colleagues do too, fight to make it as fair and equal as we possibly can.

[16:49] Mo Brady: Special thanks to David Gordon for sharing his stories with us this week. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. The Ensemblist is proud to be part of the Broadway Podcast Network. If you can't get enough theater conversations from us, there are more than 40 other great theater podcasts to listen to on the network. Check us all out at bpn.fm. Also, we've joined the world of Patreon, where you can support the work we do here at The Ensemblist for as little as $5 a month. Check us out at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. And if you don't have the cash to donate $5 a month, you can help others find out about The Ensemblist by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. One more thing, make sure you're following The Ensemblist on Instagram, where we share the stories of talented artists working in theater ensembles on Broadway and across the country. Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time.